Guilt trip will hit workers

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Clunk. That was the stable door shutting as Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister,
yesterday unveiled a consultation paper on workplace pensions aimed at
deterring the handful of companies still running final-salary pension
schemes from closing them.

Why ministers are obsessed with preserving such schemes, other than assuaging
their guilt at the fact that MPs still enjoy them, is a mystery in any case:
they are a drag on labour mobility that benefit stayers at the expense of
leavers or those employees, usually women, who take career breaks.

Mr Webb’s proposals will have several malign effects. The one thing they are